Nisei Daughter

“Up to that moment, I had never thought of Father and Mother as Japanese. True, they had almond eyes and they spoke Japanese to us, but I never felt that it was strange. It was like one person’s being red-haired and another black.”

This quote describes how multiculturalism is so natural for Sone that she is not even aware that she is growing up in two different cultures. Her worldview is that language and physical attributes such as eye shape or hair color do not define people as being American or not.

“Shod in spanking white tabis—Japanese stockings—and scarlet cork-soled slippers, the young women stood in tense excitement at the rails of the ship.”

This description of Benko and her sisters sailing into the Seattle port shows how the young women in traditional Japanese clothing look to their future both nervously and enthusiastically. By describing their posture at the rails of the ship, Sone paints a picture of anticipation and hints that these women’s lives are about to change immeasurably.

“As far as I was concerned, Mr. Ohashi’s superior standard boiled down to one thing. The model child is one with deep rigor mortis [...] no noise, no trouble, no back talk.”

Sone finds it difficult to adjust to the discipline at Japanese school, where Mr. Ohashi insists that the children adhere to traditional Japanese manners. Mr. Ohashi’s aim is to turn out well-behaved children, but Sone feels that there is something unnatural and almost morbid about his expectations.

“Yaeko would sit quietly beside her mother, knees together, dress pulled down modestly over her ankles, hands folded demurely in her lap, and eyes fixed dully on the floor. Whenever Mother gave her a magazine to look at, Yaeko would bow graciously. ‘Arigato gozai masu.’ And she would stare politely at one picture for a long, long time, turn a page so slowly and quietly that I felt like tearing into her and rattling the paper for her.”

Yaeko, daughter of ideologue Mrs. Matsui, behaves as a model Japanese girl should. Her downcast eyes indicate modesty; her bow, reverence for her elders; and her slow reading of the magazine, a becoming temperance, as she moderates her enthusiasm. For Sone, however, Yaeko’s comportment is dull, unnatural, and frustrating. Her desire to be violent toward Yaeko indicates that she wants to do away with this model of femininity altogether.

“Father’s eyes spun in their sockets at the sight of half-naked girls who came prancing on to the stage like a frenzied team of horses. Not only had those girls flung themselves all over the place like crazy, but they had kicked their legs way up in the air in the most scandalous manner.”

Mr. Itoi is prejudiced against professional dancing after his first encounter with a Western burlesque show. The speed and voracity of the spectacle is a shock to his senses, as is the Western appetite for excess, denoted in the dancers’ state of undress.

“Mother was still glowing with excitement. She looked exquisite and beautiful, in her best gown of pale lavender silk velvet. [...] She looked pretty and out of place, standing in the doorway near the mop and the laundry pile. She turned brightly to Father, ‘By the way, what does “consul wife” mean?’”

When Benko accidentally attends a party where she is mistaken for the Japanese consul’s wife, instead of her daughters’ recital, she is able to escape the duties of wife and mother for a few hours. Moreover, rather than feeling like a second-class citizen, as an immigrant who cannot claim American citizenship, Benko experiences the privilege of being treated as a much-wanted guest. Returning from the glamorous event, she displays an almost girlish excitement about where she has been and cuts an odd figure next to the household implements that characterize the drudgery of her everyday life.

“There was a terrific run on children’s tennis shoes in the Japanese shoe stores, for the foot races were the most important event of our picnic. All the girls bought snowy-white canvas rubber-soled shoes with a single strap buttoning across the instep and a demure white bow at the toe.”

This extract shows how the Japanese American community functions as a collective and self-sustaining unit. Japanese stores cater to a particular Japanese event, and all the customers buy the same dainty shoes for their daughters. The detail with which Sone describes the shoes indicates that she remembers them fondly.

“We would have to sit silently like little Buddhas and listen while our elders dredged up the past and gave it the annual overhaul. Even the prospect of Mrs. Matsui’s magnificent holiday feast was dampened by the fact that we knew we would have to eat quietly like meek little ghosts and politely refuse all second helpings.”

The Itoi children dread Mrs. Matsui’s annual New Year’s party, a repetitive performance where the Issei tell the same stories from their past and where the children’s manners are prescribed for them. For the Issei, custom is more important than one’s desire in the moment.

“Whenever we made a call and the woman of the house did not feel properly dressed to receive callers, she would turn her face away and slip past us into the back room. Father and Mother would stare at the walls as if they had seen no one. When she later emerged, they greeted each other with ceremony and warmth as if they had just come face to face for the first time.”

Here, Sone describes the Japanese talent for “not seeing things” that the spectated person did not intend for the spectator to see (101). The ritual of not seeing, both on behalf of the hostess unprepared for callers and the callers themselves, seems strange to Sone, as does the later performance of greeting each other as though for the first time. This ritual also speaks to the Japanese preference for restraint and avoiding embarrassment.

“In 1924 my country had passed an Immigration Law which kept all Orientals from migrating to America since that year. Those who had come in before that time could stay, but there would be no more new ones. That was why Father had taken us to Japan, so Grandfather could see us and say farewell to his son who had decided to make his home across the sea.”

Sone describes the hurtful predicament wherein the country she identifies as her own is also the one that forbids her elderly grandfather from being reunited with his family. There is a poignancy to their trip when Sone realizes that it is likely the last time that either she or her father will see Grandfather Itoi. Sone’s father must sacrifice his past in order to make his life in America.

“That summer Sumiko and I pretended we were living in the turret of a castle tower. We made daily swimming trips to Lake Washington, surrounded by cool green trees and beautiful homes. But deep in our hearts we were still attracted to Alki Beach. We kept comparing the mud-bottom lake and its mosquitoes to the sparkling salt water of Puget Sound, its clean, hot sands and its fiery sunsets.”

In order to deal with the racism that prevented the Itoi family from renting a house on Alki Beach, Sone and her younger sister retreat into fantasy, making their apartment a castle tower. However, as they compare the muddy lake water with the sparkling sea and the sunsets they were deprived of, they cannot help but feel that they are missing out on something that was due to them.

“When stories about the Japanese Army on the other side of the Pacific appeared in newspapers, people stared suspiciously at us on the streets. I felt their resentment in a hundred ways—the way a saleswoman in a large department store never saw me waiting at the counter. After ten minutes, I had to walk quietly away as if nothing had happened.”

Sone describes the chilling experience of being singled out for her Japanese ethnicity. Although she is an American citizen, people in the streets have no way of separating her from the Japanese warmongers on the other side of the Pacific. She learns to accept her status as a second-class citizen when, following a saleswoman’s refusal to serve her, she walks quietly away, as though she was never there in the first place.

“Although at first I shrunk from the idea of being thrown into a room full of strange women, I thanked fate I was not rooming with three Japanese girls who would have had the same sense of futility as I did. We would have died stoically together. Now I was too fascinated by Chris, Hope and Wanda to pine away quietly.”

Sone’s spell in the sanitarium proves to be a life-affirming experience for her, as she meets three lively Caucasian girls who seem to defeat tuberculosis through the sheer force of their personalities. It is also one of Sone’s first experiences befriending people outside of her community.

“The girls had not meant to be unkind even though they had made me feel as if I were a spy at large. Their response was typically Japanese, and that was the way I had behaved with Laura. No wonder Chris and Laura thought I had been deliberately impolite.”

When Chris tells Sone that her quietness around Laura, a new acquaintance, made her seem unfriendly, Sone realizes that she still retains aspects of Japanese etiquette when it comes to greeting strangers. She puts her hypothesis of difference in American and Japanese attitudes toward strangers to the test by observing how two Nisei girls who have entered the sanitarium respond to her.

“With its black, shining coiffed head bent a little to one side, its delicate pink-tipped ivory hand holding a red lacquer message box, the doll had an appealing, almost human charm.”

When Sone is burning any Japanese items that could compromise her family’s safety, she hesitates at destroying the intricate Miyazukai figure her grandmother gave her. The doll’s human qualities indicate that it is not only a beautiful artifact, but that it was made with the utmost care, and is the product of a living culture and a grandmother’s love.

“Once more I felt like a despised, pathetic two-headed freak, a Japanese and an American, neither of which seemed to be doing me any good.”

As the prejudices against people of Japanese ethnicity mount, Sone experiences self-loathing for her two nationalities. She feels freakish and unnatural, as well as pathetic, a term that denotes she feels helpless and unsafe in her own body.

“The wire fence was real. I no longer had the right to walk out of it. It was because I had Japanese ancestors. It was also because people had little faith in the ideas and ideals of democracy.”

Sone considers the visceral limitations of her current world and the way that she is being punished for her Japanese ancestry. Rather than blaming the American system, she instead blames the people for not believing in one of its strongest ideals—democracy. Therefore, a failed belief in democracy and America at its most essential is the reason for her internment.

“My day was filled, hurrying to Area D for work, hurrying back to Area A for lunch, then back to D for work again, and finally back to A for the night. The few hours we had free in the evenings [...] were spent visiting and relaxing with friends, but even our core of conversation dried out with the monotony of our lives.”

The dystopian dehumanization of the internment camp is shown by the letter symbols used to mark the different areas, where different aspects of life are compartmentalized. The monotonous existence even affects human relations, as conversation topics are limited and uninteresting.

“When the MP told us we could step outside, we rushed out to the cars like excited children on a field trip, curious to feel the prairie under our feet. I noticed that barbed wire fences had been hastily strung up on both sides of the railroad tracks and the MPs had stationed themselves along them.”

While traveling from Seattle to Idaho, a rare moment of freedom where the interned Japanese Americans set foot in nature is compromised by extreme surveillance. Sone and her fellow Japanese Americans are less out in the open and more contained in a human pen.

“We found the two-mile hike to the Administration Building fraught with danger as we slid about on high heels. Our frantic breathing steamed our hat veils until they sagged moist and limp like damp cobwebs in front of our struggling faces.”

This scene of the Itoi women soldiering to Minnie and Henry’s wedding in high heels and delicate veils in challenging conditions bears testament to their hardy determination to keep up appearances despite their internment. However, given that their finery is marred, there is a sense that their circumstances get in the way of their desire to create a fine impression.

“The Midwest and East suddenly loomed before us, an exciting challenge. Up until then America for me had meant the lovely city of Seattle, a small Japanese community and a desperate struggle to be just myself.”

Sone is excited by the prospect of heading to the Midwest, seeing it as a means of expanding her vision of America. There is so much undiscovered land and country for her to explore beyond the narrow bounds of her childhood world, where she was not able to realize a consistent or satisfying sense of self.

“In the beginning I worried a great deal about people’s reactions to me. Before I left Camp Minidoka, I had been warned over and over again that once I was outside, I must behave as inconspicuously as possible so as not to offend the sensitive public eye.”

Sone is cautious about returning to mainstream American culture because of warnings she received from Camp Minidoka recruits. She is advised to apply the Japanese talent for inconspicuousness that she was taught in childhood, in order to fend off possible hostilities.

“In spite of the mental tortures we went through, I think the Nisei have attained a clearer understanding of America and its way of life, and we have learned to value her more. Her ideas and ideals of democracy are based essentially on religious principles and her very existence depends on the faith and moral responsibilities of each individual.”

Sone displays her trademark belief in America and its national values. When she acknowledges her faith in Christianity, Sone upholds the virtue of America’s principles by saying that they are those of God. However, she also emphasizes that it is the role of every individual to ensure that American principles are adhered to.